Facebook starts piloting its peer-to-peer selling feature in India

Facebook has started a pilot of its Marketplace feature in India, starting with Mumbai. The social media’s Marketplace feature connects local buyers and sellers, who are mostly looking to buy or sell second hand or user goods via Facebook. Facebook’s spokesperson confirmed the development to MediaNama. The move was first reported by The Economic Times.

How it works? Users can list items and find items or deals within Facebook, which means users does not need a separate app or new account. Marketplace tab will be available in the left bar of your account, where you see pages and group, you will have to look for this icon if you are looking for it in a desktop, and if on mobile app, then look for this icon in the bottom of the app. According to ET’s report, there are no charges for buyers and sellers.

Note that, users in India are already using Facebook for selling and buying goods or even a real-estate properly, via groups and pages, for instance, pages like Buy & Sell Delhi/ NCR has members to the tune of 300K and registered around 167K posts in last 30 days. Facebook said in a statement, that under this tab, users will be able to search products, and will be able to filter according to location, category or price- which makes it easier for users to look for items at Marketplace as compared to groups and pages.

The social network’s marketplace competes with Olx and Quikr in India. In August last year. In August this year, Times Group’s private treaty arm Brand Capital invested Rs 130 crore ($19.4 million) in Quikr through convertible debentures. Quikr has been trying to up its game via acquisitions in different verticals. In June, Quikr acquire Bangalore-based blue and grey collar job portal BabaJobs- which was Quikr’s twelfth acquisition on the last one and half year. Also, ecommerce biggie Amazon India also launched a pilot of its P2P service in Bangalore early this year, enabling individual users to sell locally in their own cities. The service is available at amazon.in/p2p, and has been expanded to Mumbai, Chennai, and Hyderbad. Amazon’s p2p selling includes doorstep pick-up, packing and delivery as well.